40 Quotes by John Millington Synge

No man at all can be living forever and we must be satisfied.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he will be going out on a day when he shouldn't.

Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.

All the rare and royal names Wormy sheepskin yet retains

A translation is no translation unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law.

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation -- and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

Words, particularly in a play, should have the texture of a crisp, autumn apple.

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servent girls in the kitchen.